Four Years Later

Life goes on. Doesn't it?

One day, you might look back, and somehow, some way, you're here, and OxyHell is way, way back "there" somewhere. When you are in the bowels of OxyHell, it's hard to believe that there could ever come a day when you are able to look back at it as way back anywhere. When you are in the jaws of OxyHell, it's up in your face, and it's hard enough to imagine living through even the next five minutes.

But those next five minutes will come, whether you like it or not. They surely will. And you will probably be there, one way or another.

Today, I checked an old email account that I hadn't logged onto in years, four and a half years to be exact. The inbox was packed with hundreds of solicitations for the usual spam: get rich quick schemes, dating services, the latest scams, and of course, predators selling pills from God knows where. What stood out the most though were the many notifications informing me that people had been commenting on this OxyContin blog for several years, and I hadn't even known it. There was a time though, when I was neck-deep in OxyHell, unable to envision that a day would come when I would revisit this blog, amazed that I'd somehow lived through the hazy memories of it all.

So I'm still alive. The stories about my romance with Oxy, her iron grip, my futile attempts at escape, and how I kissed her Oompa-Loompa-colored sister, Suboxone, are all still here. What amazes me right now is that, every day there are people who have found themselves in OxyHell, discovering those old stories of mine and adding stories of their own. However, I've come to the realization that "my stories" on this blog aren't really my stories at all. Instead, they seem to be much the same as everybody's else's. My stories are identical to anyone who's found themselves in one chapter or another of what seems to be a collective OxyContin saga.

For now, I'll spare you the details of the past four and a half years, but because the world seems to measure a person's success by how long it has been since they have been high, I'll give you the obligatory report. Before I do though, I hope you understand what I meant by what I just said. If I've learned anything about getting out of OxyHell, it isn't about measuring how long it has been since you last got high. In fact, that has nothing to do with it.

Getting out of OxyHell is about figuring out how to live, really live, right now. It's about realizing that, despite how many minutes, hours, days, months, or years it has been since you were last high, there will never be some single moment when suddenly everything is going to be alright. Life goes on, and on, and on. There will be new challenges, new demons, and twists and changes and turns you simply can't imagine. And really, many of those challenges, eventually, and hopefully, won't have a lot to do with Oxy. For that reason alone, you've got to ask yourself, "Am I living life, really living it, right now?"

If you don't die because of it, there may come a time when you're going to look back at OxyHell and feel like it's mostly behind you. But until, or if, that day arrives, you've got to figure out how to live right now, how to be happy right now, and how to turn this crazy trip called "life" into a meaningful thing that will someday be  worth looking back upon.

As of February 2013, I haven't been high or needed Suboxone for a year and ten months. I had to think about it for a couple of minutes just to figure out that meaningless statistic. There wasn't some particular day that I can recall as "my last day," like some sort of ridiculous end point. There were no wondrous epiphanies along the way, no astounding miracles, and no magic moments that marked where my OxyHell began or ended. Life just went on. Sometimes life was better. Rarely was it worse. I'm just in a different place now; however, it's just a place that's a year and ten months later. I'm still learning how to live. I always will be. That's the way life is. That's the way it is for everybody.

Your life will go on too. Won't it? Make the best of it.